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Red's Collar -- Transistor

About: Deirdre hails from Upstate, NY, which is not New York City or Canada or really even "upstate". Deirdre is a struggling cosplayer and was shocked to find out that anime is not real and that she had ...
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Supergiant's game, Transistor, is an audio and visual experience and holds a special place in my heart as my favorite video game.

Transistor is not a hard game, nor is it long, but the characters and world are so artfully designed in a futuristic art deco style. The story focuses in on a former singer named Red, who during the events of the game has had her voice stolen from her.

Being the fan of prop builds that I am, when I saw her sword (the Transistor), Red became a dream cosplay. Save the sword, probably my favorite part about her outfit is her collar which appears to be made entirely out of feathers. I have always wanted to work on a cosplay dealing with feathers, and this project seemed like a good place to start!

Step 1: Reference and Materials

Let's take a closer look at the collar shown in the official artwork from the game and see what we're getting into.

The collar goes all the way down into the deep V neck of the dress

It raises to almost the top of her head (in other pictures it is shown much lower, however)

It is definitely made of feathers as we see the feathers flying off the collar

I thought about how I wanted my collar to be constructed, and I had seen people use Worbla's Transparent Art to construct a collar base. That seemed a little too sturdy for what I envisioned so I chose to use the following materials.

Step 2: Wire Form

I created a form for the collar out of some floral wire I had lying around from a previous project. In the last step, I wrote jewelery/floral wire because the floral wire likes to not keep any shape without twisting in on itself.

To prevent twisting, I first made a loop for the lower part of the collar and taped that down to my dress form- it went a little lower than the deep V line I wanted and just wrapped around my neck.

For the upper shape, I twisted one end of the wire around the end of the base wire and the looped it up and around to a desired height and distance out from the neck. Cut the wire a little longer and wrap around the other end of a base wire.

At this point you might want to untape the base and quickly see how it fits around your own neck to ensure it doesn't interfere with your head.

If all is in order, take some straight pieces of wire and attach the straight wire from the base to the top loops (not pictured). This will keep it from twisting in on itself and help the wires keep their shape and height.

Step 3: Glue Craftfoam

Take your craft foam and with hot glue, attach the foam to the wires. You can try to pre-cut the craft foam to shape or you can stick a whole sheet on and then trim, using the trimmed scraps for the smaller parts of the form.

Glue foam to the front and the back of the wire form. You can glue on your straight wires on on the edge of the top and bottom loops.

Using foam like this over the wires gives you a surface to glue your feathers to instead of just to wires and then to each other. For the this reason, use a white craft foam so if any foam is visible through the feathers, it's not poking out neon pink.

Step 4: Glue Your Feathers

I probably used close to 300 feathers on this collar, all glued in layers.

Start glue your feathers from the top layer down; this hides the "stem" of the feather and actually lets you layer the feathers on top of each other. Note that where you glue your top layer in relation to the craft foam may change the height of your collar. If you want to add a big of extra height, glue only a little bit of the feather on. If you're content with your height, glue most of the feather on with only a little bit sticking up.

If you buy a package of feathers, you may notice some feathers are shorter or longer than others. I like to sort through the feathers and use the slightly longer ones for the middle of the collar and saving the smaller ones for the ends. You could also just buy multiple sizes of feathers if you're feeling extra precise.

When I got to the feathers for the tip of the collar, I began gluing my feathers at an angle so the tip of the feather pointed up towards the collar instead of out.

I glued until all layers were completed and I was happy with how full the collar looked.

Step 5: Finished Collar

I fluffed out with some extra feathers here and there and then took my bias tape and hot glued it to the inside edge of the collar-- no one wants feathers poking into their necks! The bias tape also allows me a place to sew on snaps so it cal properly attach to the dress.

While the hole cosplay is still a work in progress, you can see the collar pinned to my mock up dress for the ideal of what the collar will look like when completed!

I can't wait to share pictures of my completed cosplay and my Transistor sword when I'm all done. But for now, I hope this little piece will help you get started on your cosplay!

Feel free to reach out to me with any questions and find me on instagram and facebook under RiboseCosplay~